Her astonished mother stared. "What do you know of Shakespeare?" she ejaculated.
The young girl blushed. "Papa used to read to us in the evenings sometimes. Have you forgotten, mamma? I recollect Midsummer Night's Dream very well."
Her mother spent several minutes in silent reflection, studying her daughter. "I don't know that I understand you as well as I thought I did," she then observed, with unusual softness.
Nellie came around to the back of her chair, putting a soft hand on her shoulder. "But you love me, mamma?"
"Love you?" Mistress Amanda's splendid eyes grew moist. "Yes, dear, I love you dearly. All the good that can come to me in this world is to see you happy."
"That's right, Mandy," said old lady Powell cheerily. "But you's young enough, child, to see a heap o' satisfaction on yo' own account, yit."
A little negro boy, sprawling on the floor of his mammy's cabin, and rubbing his back as he could reach it, might have told Mr. Beesly something about the paces of the mare, Stella, which that gentleman was trying to catch up with. A start of five minutes was too much in Stella's favor, if her master had intended flight from his persistent acquaintance. When the little man swung himself into his saddle, and looked here and there and everywhere in the fast-gathering dusk for the sight of a horseman in the road ahead, there was nothing whatever to be seen.
Beesly was a poor rider, on a strange, borrowed horse, and the country was unfamiliar to him. Twenty paces from Benvenew the road forked, and the commercial traveler had not the slightest idea which path to take. Invoking good luck, he took the one to the left. It went past a farm-house or two, where the hungry fellow saw lights twinkling in kitchens, and smelled—in imagination—the odor of squirrel-stew and corn-pone. After this he passed the old mill, and the outlook grew less promising.
"A plague upon him!" cried the baffled pursuer. "I didn't think Armstrong was the man to run away. What did he take me for, anyway?"
Darkness comes rapidly in these mountains. Beesly found himself skirmishing around in a curiously eccentric style, and the certainty that he was entirely astray gained his slow credence. He was not fortified by a good meal, either, to enjoy the cool night breeze that began to play through his light summer suit.